March 6, 2008
As Target Opens, Columbia Heights Sees Crime
We're as excited about the convenience of the new Columbia Heights Target as anyone, but we've also been interested to read some of the blowback to Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzman's gushing piece from Tuesday about the shiny new DCUSA retail development and how it's leading to a renaissance in the neighborhood. The Washington City Paper sees Schwartzman as wearing rose-colored glasses and painting every new project he comes across as another "renaissance" for a given neighborhood. Campus Progress also chimed in with a more in-depth reaction that calls out the reporter for falling prey to the breathless language of real estate developers and largely ignoring the other outcomes of gentrification in Columbia Heights.
This week's evidence does suggest that it might be a little early to call the new development the end-all, be-all of fixing Columbia Heights' problems. NBC4 ran a story last night on a rash of violent crime within blocks of the new store this week. On Wednesday night, someone was shot in the leg three blocks away, and on Monday alone, the blocks around the new development saw five robberies and assaults within hours of one another. This morning, there were reports of more robberies at the Columbia Heights Metro station on a popular Columbia Heights email list:
Peter: Yesterday afternoon at 4:55 p.m., I was mugged at gunpoint by two teenagers on the down escalator entering the Columbia Heights Metro station. The Metro station manager was very helpful, and transit police arrived on the scene within minutes and were also very helpful and professional in their response. It seems there have been a few similar robberies in recent days, though not necessarily in the Metro, so I just wanted to alert the neighborhood to be on guard.The MPD told NBC4 they were deploying extra patrols and undercover officers around the new complex as an immediate response to the rash of crimes.Richard: A friend of mine was also robbed at gunpoint on the down escalator to Columbia Heights Metro on the Southwest entrance off of 14th street around 11pm.
Sounds like the same person from 5pm was still in business 6 hours later.
A $1B investment in a shopping center...and it's going to end up like Cityplace back in the 90's if we don't get a handle on the crime around here.
Photo by Sommer Mathis
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Wow. Getting mugged after work going down the escalator to the CH metro? That's messed up. That was where I was daily last year. I would have never imagined that to happen at that time of the day.
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They couldn't mug you if you would WALK down the escalators!! Lazy $#%#&&
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This on the heels of the armed robbery of an ice cream store on busy U Street around noon makes me wonder whether these types of brazen daytime robberies are increasing in DC.
Is there any data indicating this?
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Despite all the arguments against gentrification, I would gladly welcome it if it actually meant getting rid of these f'ing criminals.
Granted, living in any city bears this risk of getting mugged, but this is rediculous.
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I wish I had control over the school system. Military style school for all with 2 hours worth of exercise afterwards and if you didn't wanna attend school I would deport you to some slum to help give you perspective....I can't fault developers finally coming back into the city or politicians but I do fault whoever is the parent of this dumb kid robbing people..
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At least they weren't throwing rocks.
Anybody who's spent more than five minutes near 13th and Kenyon knows it's going to take a lot more than some shiny stripmall to fix Columbia Heights' problems.
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Think it's bad now?... Wait until the Best Buy opens.
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A bunch of people walking out of a store with shiny new electronics and media, within a few blocks of public housing in both directions, that is going to be awesome!
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I live down the street from all this. The lil punk thugs are just walking around in circles looking for any IPod/IPhone unawares yokel to pick off. They're like roaches. The cops are just being PC about it.
The problem is all the thugware. The wanna be thugs are wearing the same thing that the real thugs are wearing. The cops don't want a lawsuit. It's OK to loiter and wander around just ask the day laborers who hang out in front of the 7/11. It's every man or woman for themselves. Be aware of your surroundings.
Don't walk thru the neighborhood carrying a 19 inch plasma TV. Don't advertise your wealth or stupidity.
Don't think that those 2 punks following U aren't after U. They are after U. B aware. Don't be a victim.
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Sounds like MPD needs to do a good amount of undercover stings with cops walking around with iPods or with packages in Target and Best Buy bags. If this kind of crime continues, two things will happen: 1) people will not use Metro to do their shopping at the new stores; and 2) people who might have gone to the new stores will continue going to VA and MD where it's "safer."
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There were a gazillion traffic cops out last night, loudly blowing their whistles and yelling at pedestrians around DCUSA. Rather than helping with traffic flow, as far as I could tell they were causing confusion and slowing things down. Perhaps they should be deployed elsewhere in the neighborhood on anti-crime patrol, given the recent batch of brazen robberies.
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I've lived in Columbia Heights for two years now, and only recently have I had major crime problems. Three times in past six weeks, sometime has tried to break into my apartment late at night. I'm looking into finding a new place to live.
As for problems related to the new Target, in the two days the store has been open I've seen so many near-accidents caused by people swerving around each other trying to get into the underground Park off the 14th and Park intersection, and have been nearly run over twice, both times by someone running a red light to turn left onto Park.
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I've lived in Columbia Heights for two years now, and only recently have I had major crime problems. Three times in past six weeks, sometime has tried to break into my apartment late at night. I'm looking into finding a new place to live.
As for problems related to the new Target, in the two days the store has been open I've seen so many near-accidents caused by people swerving around each other trying to get into the underground Park off the 14th and Park intersection, and have been nearly run over twice, both times by someone running a red light to turn left onto Park.
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What is this Cityplace the listserve excerpt mentions and what happened to it in the 90's?
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Monkey, Tigidal, and Warshington are right.
I'm a huge proponent of spending my money in the city, but I doubt you'll see me at DCUSA much. I lived in C.H. for a while in 2001-2002 and I still have a bad taste in my mouth: too much harrassment, brazen muggings, gunshots (and a lovely bullet hole in my living room wall as a keepsake). I tried to be an urban pioneer, but was more than happy to get my ass south of U street when it came time to buy. I know things have changed, but they've got a long way to go. I doubt C.H. will ever see the renewal that Logan Circle has seen.
Bless all of you live up there. Now you'll have gridlock to go along with the crime.
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I wish I had control over the school system. Military style school for all with 2 hours worth of exercise afterwards
Yeah, because that's exactly what we need -- fitter hoodlums who can catch the people walking down the escalators as well.
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After reading these stories and personal experiences, I couldn't be happier that I moved out of CH in October. Just in time.
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Glad I get off at U Street before things turn Wild West 1 stop up.
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But, but, we all know that NW is the only 'safe' DC quadrant....
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Wow, I lived in CH for 5 years and never had a single problem. Judging from the rest of the comments it's seems like I was extraordinarily lucky.
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So I just wasted some valuable time on the Washington Post's Local Explorer. They have some interesting statistics about crime risk in different as compared to the national average:
Columbia Heights/Mount Pleasant: 0.89
Adams Morgan: 1.24
Dupont Circle: 0.69 (kind of appropriate)
Cleveland Park/Woodley Park: 2.07
Georgetown: 2.6
Clarendon (as in Virginia): 1.04
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What do those numbers mean Esmeralda?
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They mean that your risk of being the victim of crime in Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant is actually LOWER than the national average.
It's because of the density: there is more crime in absolute numbers in CH/MP than in CP/WP, but because there are alot more residents, your personal risk is lower.
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shit, my comment never went through.
oh well, what i was trying to say was that the whole campus progress article sucks. it's just a bunch of college-age whining about how "the evil gentrifiers" are ruining another "real" neighborhood.
read the dupont current article about columbia heights this week. they actually interview someone who has lived there for at least 50 years, and she talks about how excited she is to see retail moving back to the area (yes, that's right kiddies, columbia heights used to be a retail hub before the riots).
this isn't displacement, this is a return to the way things used to be...
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Very true. If you look at the crime map for my old crime-ridden neighborhood in SW it looks downright benign, but that's because there's a lot fewer people over there.
I live near Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan now, and while there are a lot more instances of crime, it's also spread out among many more people. Not that CH/AM is some magical safe haven, but I think it's a little better.
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In regards to density -- it's also important to consider that probably one of the reasons the "risk" in AdMo and G'town is higher is b/c the calculation doesn't include all the extra people who go to those neighborhoods for shopping and nightlife. It's possible, but my guess is that risk is based purely on crimes per resident.
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I moved into CH this summer, and since then have been followed by masturbating men on 3 seperate occasions, all in the early evening hours. There's more than just simple robberys and shootings going on, its all kinds of crime.
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Mount Pleasant has a much lower crime rate than Columbia Heights, so by combining the two neighborhoods you're not going to get meaningful data on Columbia Heights.
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If the Washington Post told me that the sky was blue, I'd want independent confirmation from three sources.
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The hyperbole never ends when it comes to DC crime and the "evils" of gentrification. I've lived in Mt. Pleasant for 2.5 years and never even been hassled, and I've used that metro tons of times and never felt unsafe. I admit I've probably been fortunate, but it's by no means the case that everyone who lives here is running into these problems.
Moreover, I walked to the new Target yesterday and street traffic was no worse than normal (actually better now that all the Jersey barriers/closed sidewalks are gone). And I'm pretty thrilled that I can walk to Target and have a huge selection of stuff I need that is actually in stock. It looked to me like a lot of working class African-American and Latino shoppers were pretty happy too. Yeah, it's such a blow to the neighborhood.
As for those who moved out of or decided not to move into CH; good. Prices are too high already.
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To better explain my last comment:
U R not safe anywhere. Just B aware of your surroundings. People get mugged everyday in Chinatown and G'town.
I love my neighborhood Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights. Add on Adams Morgan and you have to admit...without all the idiots and thugs..it would be a beeUtiful place.
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Cranky: you might want to remove the quotes around "safer". This is a shot in the dark, but I'm willing to bet the probability of getting mugged at the Targets in, say, Potomac Yards or further down Rt1 in Alexandria is lower than in CH. I live off U St. and try to do my shopping locally, but I'm in no great hurry to head to CH to do my big-box shopping. Not yet, anyway.
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I moved into CH this summer, and since then have been followed by masturbating men on 3 seperate occasions, all in the early evening hours.
That morning wood can be a real pain to shake off, particularly when you have a negative reaction to Cialis. Priapism is a serious medical condition that affects 9-out-of-10 men north of Florida Avenue. Besides, this is the standard DC way of saying, "Bonjour! Comment allez vous?"
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Agree with dcstadiumnow, but in the five years I've lived there, there have been at least two homicides in Mt. Pleasant (the first, gang-related five years ago, the other, a random guy apparently minding his own business). In terms of overall crime though, I'd agree that Mt. Pleasant definitely seems safer than Columbia Heights.
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Well actually, DCster, your risk of getting murdered in CH/MP is about 8 times the national average. Statistics are fun.
In terms of lumping Mount Pleasant into the stats -- acknowledged that you have more crime across 16th Street, but I doubt the difference is big enough to totally skew the numbers. The main point I was trying to make is that the perception of crime in a neighborhood is often worse than the crime itself -- and that in other neighborhoods you can have a false sense of security.
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I've been living around Cardozo HS since September and haven't had any problems, luckily, although I see drugs getting slinged from Clifton Terrace on a regular basis. Those gangs piss me off. It's terribly sad that, for some reason, kids feel like joining a stupid wannabe gang is the only road towards upward social mobility. Or something.
I think a lot of these brats are under 18, where is where the problem lies. DC juvenile crime laws are ridiculously lenient. The following needs to happen before anything will change:
a) juvenile laws must become harsher
b) DC public education needs to stop being a freakin joke
c) parents need to grow some balls and take responsibility for their kids, at least know where they/what they're doing after school!
On another note, when I went out late I got in the habit of carrying a swiss army knife with me. My roommate just told me this is constitutes carrying a concealed weapon and is illegal.
Great, so there's literally no way to protect myself other than by taking Marshal Arts Classes? It's completely perverse.
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Just FYI, on part of the site where DCUSA now sits, there used to be a large retail and entertainment complex, which must have also drawn large crowds and traffic in combination with the Tivoli Theater across the street. It was demolished god knows how many years ago, but just wanted to point out that the site has always been a busy retail location, and the decades where it was a vacant lot were the exception rather than the rule. See photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57668330@N00/592017930/
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Why is it that when I saw "CH/MP" I read "CHIMP?"
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
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"Well actually, DCster, your risk of getting murdered in CH/MP is about 8 times the national average. Statistics are fun."
Unless you're a member of a gang, that is almost certainly not true. Assault, maybe, but not homicide.